For a few years, and really for the first time since the Seventies, New York City was a Rock and Roll city. The rich kids were slumming it in the Lower East Side while the rest of the scene was building practice spaces and temporary bedrooms in lofts in Williamsburg. But they’d all meet up in the bathrooms of bars on Metropolitan Avenue and Avenues A, looking dewey and grimey and completely fabulous.

Almost as soon as it came, however, it went. The rents increased. The drugs got stronger. Those college loans didn’t pay for themselves. And so, by the end of the Aughts, the scene dispersed — to Philly and Austin and Portland and LA. The heroes became instant legends. The memories became instant nostalgia. New York City — including Brooklyn, including Williamsburg — went back to being an epicenter for money and food and culture and nightlife, but not a home for Rock and Roll.

In reality, the Big Apple had already lost the trophy years earlier. By 2005, our colder, more polite siblings to the North had already beaten us to the punch. Seemingly, every important Rock album from that year came from Canada. Arcade Fire figured out how to combine The Boss with Talking Heads and David Bowie. The Constantines figured out how to combine The Boss with Fugazi and Wilco. And Wolf Parade figured out how to combine The Boss with The Pixies and Joan of Arc. It had been more than twenty years — since Bryan Adams’ “Reckless” — that Canadian Rock sounded so deeply American.

While those Ontarian and Québécois bands were working on the fusion and fission of Springsteen, something else was happening further West. In Vancouver, British Columbia, a gang of gutter punks, metal burnouts, prog nerds and arena rockers had assembled to work on matters beyond the realm of nuclear physics. Beyond quantum physics. Their obsession had nothing to do with The Boss. Theirs was metaphysical. Science fictional.

They called themselves Black Mountain and they were fronted by a guy with long hair and a scraggly beard, who looked completely unthreatening but also like he could start a cult that would end the world. He appeared too small given the scale of the music he made, but also like he might be decades older and wiser than we realized. He gave off heavy metal druid vibes and was born in 1969, the year peace and love died, which meant that he’d lived through all of the Seventies. The Stooges and Sabbath and Zeppelin and Yes and AC/DC and Nixon and Carter and uppers and downers were coursing through his veins.

Stephen McBean is a lifer. He was already a lifer 1981, when he was just twelve years old. By 2005, however, he was decades into the musical journey that began with his first band, Jerk Wad. Jerk Wad begot Mission of Christ, and then Gus and Ex Dead Teenager. In the mid-Nineties, McBean joined forces with drummer Joshua Wells, named their band Jerk With a Bomb and signed a record deal with Jagjaguwar. And that’s where the Black Mountain prelude begins.

Jerk With a Bomb made music that sounded like Hippies blessed with the spirit and savvy of D.I.Y. Punks. For nearly a decade, they were Vancouver B.C. mainstays, but were never more than curiosities South of the border. They were misfits — too old for their scene, too slow and stoned to be called punks, but too dark to be considered folkies. Over the course of three albums, McBean and Wells didn’t travel very far, but their vibrations were powerful enough to attract Jeremy Schmidt, Matt Camirand and Amber Webber into their orbit.

That quintet — with McBean on guitar and vocals, Wells on drums, Schmidt on keys, Camirand on bass and Webber also on vocals — became Black Mountain, a band that dared to wonder if The Stooges and Pink Floyd could coexist. If Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac were more similar than different. And if Yes and Black Sabbath had common ground. In fact, they wondered if all of those things could be true at the same time.

It sounded like an impossible — possibly unsavory — concoction. But, amazingly, it worked. Black Mountain’s self-titled debut achieved the rare feat of being obviously derivative while, also, sounding like absolutely nothing else. They played heavy Blues and darker Folk, like Zeppelin. They plodded and pummeled like Sabbath and clapped and droned like The Stooges. They waved and meandered like Yes while they floated and dreamed like Floyd. They did all of those things, all at once. And somehow, they made it work.

Black Mountain had many gifts — a wide creative aperture, a bohemian energy and an uncanny knack for emulation. But their greatest gift — their one true superpower — was the vocal interplay between McBean and Webber. The former possesses a reedy, nasal voice, the sort of instrument that suffices for a Punk band but struggles within a Metal or Folk setting. What he lacks in range or power, however, he makes up for with a player’s pitch and a stoner’s haze. Webber, on the other hand, is a force of nature, covering both the lower and upper ranges that McBean misses and featuring a tone that emanates deep from within her diaphragm.

Amber Webber has a rare ability to sound deeply heartfelt and dispassionate at the same time; like if Dolly Parton sang “Jolene” an octave lower and if she were enamored of Nico. When she takes the low parts in duet with McBean, it’s like Stevie and Lindsey singing “Silver Springs,” but with less cocaine, no backstory and a more benevolent witchcraft. She probably drew pegasuses with lightning bolts on her middle-school notebooks. And I bet they were all black and white. No rainbows. No colors, except maybe red for some gore.

In spite (or because) of their evident talent, Black Mountain’s debut was polarizing. People either marveled at its massive ambition and bewildering magic or they dismissed it as derivative sorcery. Pitchfork awarded it a “Best New Music” distinction, but notably left it off their year end top fifty list. Many critics splashed stars towards the album, while a seemingly equal number were convinced of the band’s awfulness. The case against Black Mountain rested on the degree to which you were entranced by their music — the crunching riffs, the swirling synths and the vocal interplay — divided by the extent to which the weight of their influences bothered you. 

I, for one, was completely entranced. And as for their secondhandedness — not only did I not mind it, but I marveled at its ambition. I’d tuned into (and liked) the Psychedelic Garage Rock revival: from The Brian Jonestown Massacre to Psychic Ills, Dead Meadow and The Black Angels. But those bands sounded quaint compared to Black Mountain’s debut. Those bands sounded like Punks who also liked (or needed) to get high. To me, Black Mountain sounded like Punks who also wanted to figure out time travel.

In contrast with other Canadian acts that Pitchfork embraced in 2005, Black Mountain had an old soul. McBean was closing in on forty by the time of his band’s first record, meaning that he’d undoubtedly, unironically obsessed over K.I.S.S. “Dark Side of the Moon,” rather than “Spiderland” or “Slanted and Enchanted,” was his old testament. He was around when Punk was still considered dangerous and when Metal was deemed satanic. What might have sounded contrived to younger ears in 2005 was more a given for Black Mountain’s frontman. I was born in 1974, five years after McBean. And so, personally, I never much cared for Yes. I was never a “Zeppelin guy.” Not a stoner. “Dark Side of the Moon” never changed my life. But that first Black Mountain record — that thing floored me.

I was not alone. On the heels of their startling debut, Black Mountain toured the world, finding a small legion of adoring heshers, nerds, stoners and punks. They toured large clubs as headliners (presumably in a carpeted van with a dual cassette player), and massive stadiums as an opening act (for Coldplay, no less). By the end of 2006, they were not famous like their heroes or universally beloved like Arcade Fire. But they were very much a working, in demand, Rock and Roll band who’d made a buzzy record on an admired indie record label with global distribution. No more restaurant or copy shop gigs for Stephen McBean. All those years of Dungeons and Dragons had paid off. He was, finally, a real life, professional wizard.

Over the next decade, McBean alternated between Black Mountain and his hornier, lower stakes side project, Pink Mountaintops (which often also included performances from his Black Mountain bandmates). Webber and Wells, meanwhile, had Lightning Dust, their folkier, mystical alternate ego. The name and shapeshifting didn’t appear to be a problem, though. In fact, it kind of made sense. Black Mountain felt more like a commune or a collective than a band. If Godspeed You Black Emperor had Thee Silver Mt. Zion and Fly Pan Am and Set Fire to Flames, if Will Oldham had Palace and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, why couldn’t McBean and his friends have their own assorted monikers and moonlight hustles?

Of course they could. McBean, Wells, Webber and Schmidt could freelance. They could take time away from Black Mountain and then get back together. But, there would also be a cost to the separations. With each successive album, it became clear that, while their vision endured, the special alchemy of Black Mountain might also have a shelf life. That there is magic not just in witches and wizards, but in time and place.

It is entirely natural for bands to regress (or worse) after an early peak. It happens to most of them, including the best of them. Maybe especially the best of them. And Black Mountain was no exception. Whereas their spectacular first album breathlessly turned from stoner Punk to dark Folk to Prog Metal with aplomb, their ensuing albums were narrower in scope. “Into the Future” (2008) was skyscraping, maximum riffage. “Wilderness Heart” was more earth paganism. Both were impressive — occasionally much more than that. But neither displayed the otherworldliness of their debut.

After three albums plus one soundtrack album, McBean followed his muse through San Francisco, east towards Altamont and then due South to L.A., where the best players who were also the best stoners all landed. Meanwhile, the rest of his band was scattered across the western coast of North America. Ten years in, Black Mountain was still a band, just not the kind that lived together in a van for months on end. Pitchfork still cared about them, but less so. Fans (like me) still rooted for them, but also suspected that we’d already seen and heard the best of them.

Those suspicions, however, turned out to be wrong. In 2015, decades after he first dared to connect the dots between Black Flag and Black Sabbath, forty-seven year old Stephen McBean dusted off his beard, plugged in his Gibson Les Paul, and sent out the Black Mountain smoke signal. Wells, Schmidt, Webber and new bassist/fellow hesher Arjan Miranda answered the call. Over the next few months, the band assembled in Vancouver, Seattle and L.A. to record what would become “IV,” Black Mountain’s most ambitious album to date.

“IV” is a flex — a statement of purpose. Its Hipgnosis-inspired cover screams Floyd and Hawkwind — a verdant English manor garden burns while the Concorde sails overhead and a dude in an astronaut helmet looks on. Its bank of synthesizers — Mellotron, Arp, Farfisa and the other antiquities that Schmidt has collected — are straight Yes and E.L.P. Its bass and guitar vacillate from Waters and Gilmore to Page and Jones. Everything about “IV” is of one piece. It knows exactly what it wants to be — an epic record, daring and ridiculous enough to borrow its name from one of the most famous albums in the history of Rock and Roll.

That all being said, Black Mountain’s “IV” is obviously not Led Zeppelin’s “IV.” It lacks the force and cogency of its more famous predecessor. Moreover, Black Mountain’s fourth album is their least bluesy, least metal, most spacey and most proggy album. A more accurate title might actually be “Light Side of the Moon” on account of its celestial symphonics. The riffs are still very much there, but they are not the thing. The Rick Wakeman keys are often the thing. The Roger Waters hum is occasionally the thing. But, really, Amber Webber’s voice is the thing.

Without Webber, Black Mountain is an excellent, uncanny tribute to the gestalt of Seventies Hard Rock and Progressive Rock. With Webber, however, they levitate to more rarified air. For instance, “Mothers of the Sun,” the Genesis sunshower that becomes a Black Sabbath thunderstorm, is curious and impressive but, also, a little boring…until Webber arrives. Then it sounds like Mother Nature herself, deciding whether it’s worth her time to stick around or whether it’s time to take flight. McBean’s voice is all twigs and leaves. Webber’s is soil and roots.

After its serpentine opener, Black Mountain presses the pedals to the metal on “Florian Saucer Attack,” (effectively) reimagining Styx with Pat Benatar as their lead singer. And they keep things moving on “Defector,” which (also effectively) confirms that the delta between good Prog and great Prog — and between good and great Black Mountain songs — is almost always the groove.

In between its long forward and even longer coda, “IV” can get a little too cute. “You Can Dream” is a fine take on Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream,” but nothing more. “Cemetery Breeding” captures that moment between Bowie’s “Scary Monsters” and Echo and The Bunnymen’s “Ocean Rain,” which, it turns out, might have been better in theory than on record. And "(Over and Over) The Chain" is music for a planetarium that could not afford to license “Dark Side of the Moon.” Each of these songs offer something worthwhile — frequently more than one thing. But they’re just pieces of larger, underrealized ideas. The hop of the cowbell. The snap of the handclap. The interplay of the voices. The way one keyboard rings out on top of the soft bed of another one. There is sonic excellence throughout “IV,” but there are also stretches wherein the parts are greater than the sum.

“IV” concludes much in the same way it begins — with a languid, nine minute Galactic-Prog meditation. “Space to Bakersfield” is a showstopper, featuring McBean’s version of Gilmour’s precision and Amber’s majestic invocations, which radiate like the voice of Hera broadcast by NASA ground control. It’s a calling card track, the kind of song that sets Prog Reddit ablaze. It’s definitely the most fully realized “long song” on the album. But, compared to “Crucify Me,” the track that precedes it, “Space to Bakersfield” is not all that special.

That’s because “Crucify Me,” attempts the unthinkable — aiming straight for the broken, why bother, tear it all down, empty beauty of Big Star’s third album (“Sister Lovers”). Crystalline acoustic guitar (twelve string, I think). Windswept synth. No discernible rhythm. Shaky, gender-ambiguous vocals. It’s the closest any band not named “Big Star” has ever gotten to “Kanga Roo.”

To be clear, in the same way that “IV” is no match for Zeppelin’s “IV,” “Crucify Me” is no “Kanga Roo.” In spite of its masochistic title, and because of its obvious homage, Black Mountain’s song lacks the open-woundedness of Big Star’s. On the other hand, Black Mountain went for it. As they had with Zeppelin and Sabbath and Love and Floyd and Genesis, McBean and his band dared to make the trip and do the digging and go see if there was still gold down there. They don’t always succeed. There’s probably more quartz and geodes and fools gold than the truly rare stuff. But McBean’s a lifer — a digger. And so, he keeps on living and digging.

Sometime after “IV,” founding members Joshua Wells and Amber Webber left Black Mountain. In 2017, Black Mountain released “Destroyer,” an album as loud, muscular and misshapen as the car for which it was named. Like every one of their previous records, it’s a feast of big riffs and spacey runs, taken straight from source. It’s both original and derivative. It’s high and it’s bummed out. It features most everything you could want from a Black Mountain album. Everything, except Amber Webber.

In 2021, forty years after he formed his weirdo tween band, Jerk Wad, Stephen McBean decided to take a break for drugs and booze. Amber Webber returned to Black Mountain that same year.

by Matty Wishnow